


Anniversary

by Winterstar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post The Avengers: Infinity War, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 20:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14480454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: Spoilers inside. The summary is in the author's notes.





	Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

> Every anniversary of the moment of the mad Titan, they would promise each other they would live, they would survive

“My lord, the Captain will not eat.” The servant settled the tray of food on the table next to the door to the study. Thor turned to nod to the man – an Asgardian, there were so few of them left now. After Hella, the attack on their refuge barge, and finally the war – there were less and less of them. The man, thin and still bruised from the hurt that pained them all for so very long, stepped further into the room. “I fear he may get ill. He hasn’t eaten well in days. And it is so cold and he is human, after all.”

Thor tried to smile to comfort his fellow Asgardian, but the truth never took hostages – it only maimed and crippled. “Go, my friend. I will check on our good Captain.”

Nevillor left and Thor stared into the empty space in the ornately furnished room. Everything around him was beautiful. The fixtures, the furniture. But nothing felt real – still after all this time. It felt as if he walked through the dust of his companions. Thor felt the ax, Stormbreaker, in his hands again, the push of it through ribs and sternum alike. He felt the soft tissue giving way to its power and to its blade. A killing blow through the chest to stop a heart – a cold and blackened heart – to save the whole of the universe, or half of it. The words echoed in his brain _you should have gone for the head_. Yet it was not those words, not that sound, that haunted him all these many years. It was something simple and solitary

Snap.

Thor closed his eyes to the beauty around him and he was on the battlefield again. The blood and death all around him burnt his nostrils and the flesh of a Titan before him only moments away from his own mortality changed everything for Thor. He jerked his mind away from that moment. He’d been alive for centuries, fought many foes, and defeated them. And yet, he’d lost everything. 

Almost everything.

Again.

He looked at the high ceiling with it’s cross beams and carved dark wood. He shouldn’t have left the good Captain alone on this day. Not on this day of all days. His mother, Frigga, once told him that Melancholia was a disease of a broken heart. One that no medicine of the Asgard could repair. When she taught him these things, she would often glance at Loki and a hurt so powerful would come to her expression. All those years and Thor never guessed, never knew his mother’s own despondency. She was lost to him now, as was most of Asgard and his whole family. 

Except for the Captain.

Thor went to the tray and picked it up. He walked into the wide hallways of the Palace of the Winter Eclipse. Here on Gilmorrin, he’d found refuge with what was left of Asgard. A few scatterings of people across the realms still existed, and Thor spent the ages gathering them to this new world. They daren’t call it new Asgard, but here they discovered a certain peace against the horrors of what was left to them. A diaspora. With no home, no ark could bring them to safety. So, they all colonized this small planet and made the best of it. Until the end of their days. An unspoken oath amongst them all – no children were brought inot the world again. The population would age and die and then Asgard would vanish. 

The long halls remind him of the Asgard of his youth. They tried to make this place a reminder of his home world, but not a replica. That just hurt too much to fathom doing it. So here they paid homage to the best of Asgard. Here they made a home until they faded from existence, faded from memory.

There were times that Thor wished for the dust of death that so many of his friends, so many of lives had gotten. It seemed a mercy now when he thought of the aftermath. The mad Titan, Thanos, never considered how the worlds fashioned and constructed with so many lives behind the designs would ever survive. Earth, like so many others, devolved into chaos. Little was left after the wars and the battles. Little to hope for, little to save.

They had saved as many as they could those first few hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Thor and his Captain stayed and helped save the world – one last time. It was in those long months of toil they’d found one another. The Captain became his confidant and he spoke in low tones about his losses and his grief.

“In the end, Loki was my brother. I cannot deny it. I saw what he tried to do, how he tried to stop-.” Thor had paused then, too overcome with emotion to continue. The moment that Thanos broke Loki’s neck and the finality of it, still turned Thor’s stomach.

An arm wrapped around his broad shoulders, an arm as strong as his own. “He was your brother, you don’t have to apologize for mourning him, Thor.”

He looked up at Steven. They were in the Avengers’ compound, the epicenter of the rebuilding efforts. They sat quietly in Thor’s rooms. Steven still refused to take residence at the compound, though he and Tony had long since buried the hatchet. Steven spent his hours in the field. Working and lending a hand where he could. He spent his time with a duffle on his back, wandering the country to where ever Tony told him needed help. He never stopped during those earliest of days. When he came to the compound he always found his way to Thor’s rooms and crashed on his couch. 

“I mourn them all,” Thor had said and flexed his hands. All of those lives were on his soul, stained his core. He had but one chance to stop it all. He could have easily killed the madman that did this to them. He had failed. A god had failed. _You should have gone for the head._ “I failed them all.”

“No. You can’t do that,” Steven had said. “You can’t take on the responsibility and the guilt for what he did. He was the madman. Not you.”

“I had the chance and I went -.”

Steven had stopped him then, by bringing him close and holding him. “Please, don’t. Don’t.” And Thor had understood. The what-ifs just made it worse. The probabilities and hopes. Thor had watched Stark turn into an old man in just a handful of days when he returned to Earth due to what the wizard had done. To have the burden of survival – Thor knew it well. 

They’d all tried to reverse it. That had been their first action, their first trial. But the mad Titan destroyed the stones and there had been no going back. Killing a madman was only revenge and nothing more. Cold and heartless. No hope came from it at all. And so during those early days, when Thor mourned, Steven held him.

They clung to one another and somehow or another fell asleep in one another’s arms that night. It began a tradition that any time Steven was at the compound and not racing around the world to do good, he would bunk with Thor. No one said a word. Thor began to accompany Steven on his voyages. They both accomplished so much and would come back to the compound exhausted and sleep together, in one another’s arms. 

It stayed like that for years.

Until they left Earth and roamed the cosmos to do more good there. Thor felt the call of the stars and when he told Steven that he needed to leave, Steven only said when do we go? It was simple and complete, and their lives changed after that. Steven said goodbye to Earth, to what friends he had left and never looked back. He dedicated himself to helping Thor find whatever Asgardians might be left. They traveled the cosmos, gathering the last members of Thor’s destroyed world and searched for mementos and cultural artifacts from Asgard as well. 

They built Gilmorrin with their own hands. Along the way, they fell in love. That simple fact he thought saved them both from oblivion. They lay with one another at night, huddled in one another’s arms. The heat from their lovemaking dissipating but at the same time, warming their shocked and frozen hearts. If Thor hadn’t had Steven all these years, he would have ceased to exist. He recognizes that now. 

Thor walked up the wide staircase and went to his suite of rooms. He didn’t bother knocking since he shared the rooms with Steven. He pushed open the doors with the tray and then set it to the side to close the door again. 

He walked through the outer vestibule of the rooms and then through the sitting room with its stone fireplace that Steven had built so many years ago. A fire crackled in the hearth, but the doors to the balcony were open, letting the cold inside the rooms. Thor went to the balcony because he knew that’s where Steven would be – that’s where he always was on this day.

“Steven.” 

The balcony was stone – unmovable and strong. The stone of the balustrade was carved with different characters – different stone sculptures. Each one someone they lost all those years ago. The figures held up the railing with their hands. Steven sat on a chair and stared out at the suns setting in the east. 

“It’s today.”

“Yes, I know.” Thor stood to the side and allowed Steven his reverie.

“It’s different this time, I think,” Steven said as stared out at the colors of gold and red in the cloud heavy sky. His hair had grown long, to his shoulders while Thor had kept his short as a memory to all those he lost. Steven still sported the beard though no gray was seen in it. He hadn’t aged a day. 

“Why do you say that?” Thor asked as he moved closer. There was a chill in the air. It reminded Thor of winters on Asgard. 

“Because now they’re all gone, you know. All of them,” Steven said, and Thor knew what he meant. “It’s been-.”

“One hundred years since-.”

“Since the mad Titan,” Steven said. He finally looked at Thor and his tears were as fresh as they were the moment he’d seen Thor and whispered to him _Oh God_. The moment they knew they’d lost. A century ago.

“It is no anniversary to celebrate or reminisce,” Thor said. Some years Thor had adamantly opposed the memorials and the services. He didn’t want to remember, he refused to hear the choruses of songs for the lost, the souls of dust. 

“No, but it is one to remember and mourn. Again,” Steven said, and the tears were fresh and new and Thor could not stop himself. He put his hands on Steven’s face, cradled his jaw.

“I could not have survived if his indiscriminate culling had taken you, my dearest Captain,” Thor said and leaned down to place his lips on his forehead, his eyes to taste his tears. “I would not have lived with the guilt.”

Steven grasped Thor’s short hair and they both gasped through the pain of loss and death and ash. Steve heaved in a breath and shuddered as he exhaled. “I thought after a century it would pale. I thought time would take me. Time would age me. I thought I -.”

Thor kissed him again, hungry and needy, denying him the words. When he parted he said, “Don’t. I cannot lose you. Ever. I am glad the serum in your blood has given you the gift of the gods.”

“Are you so sure that it is a gift?”

Thor lay his forehead against Steven’s. “Only with you it is.”

Thor held onto his Captain, shielding him from the cold even as he knew that his Captain had saved him from something worse than the cold, from the torture of self-doubt and grief.

“Today we cry, my Captain,” Thor said.

“Tomorrow, we live,” Steven whispered back. It was their ritual. Every anniversary of the moment of the mad Titan, they would promise each other they would live, they would survive. They would carry the lives of those lost to them forever, and in their memory, they would live on.

Together.


End file.
